


Only Soldiers Left Alive

by Thymesis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Exchange Assignment, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: s04e13 A World Between Worlds, Sexual Content, Vode An Exchange 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-05-31 01:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15108767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thymesis/pseuds/Thymesis
Summary: They are both old soldiers, and when you’re an old soldier, you deserve that much.





	Only Soldiers Left Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



When you’ve been a military man for as long as Rex has, you know how _not_ to draw the undesirable attention of your comrades on those occasions that you need some time for yourself. It’s not a matter of applying officially to headquarters for personal leave. The trick is, rather, knowing precisely when you can best be spared, and that knowledge can be very useful.

An encrypted comm comes in late in the evening at the end of a tense standard week running food and essential medical supplies across an Imperial blockade in the Mid Rim. Rex decides to get a good night’s sleep back at base before heeding the summons. He wants to be fresh when he departs again, not dead on his feet. Even so, he’s making the last of six hyperspace jumps in an unregistered Kuati freighter to the rendezvous point only thirty hours after receipt of Ahsoka’s message.

She is already waiting for him, and she boards immediately. She looks—impossible to put a polite spin on it—like absolute _hell_. In fact, she looks as though she may have been taking an ill-advised holiday there. She’s limping, and one of her shoulder joints appears to have been dislocated. She’s covered in sweat and grime and other unmentionable substances, and Rex decides he’d rather not inquire—

“Malachor: the ancient Sith homeworld. Strong in the dark side of the Force,” she says as she takes a seat in the co-pilot’s chair. Sometimes, it’s as if she can read the direction of his thoughts (which, by now, she probably can). “Don’t ask,” she adds, just in case that wasn’t already abundantly clear.

“Nah, I wasn’t planning to,” Rex replies as he punches the requisite coordinates into the navicomputer.

Ahsoka offers nothing further in the way of explanation. She merely leans back and closes her eyes. Her breathing is slow, deep, and quiet. Even her wince of pain is perfectly silent as the abrupt, lurching jump to hyperspace jolts her various injuries anew.

They’ll have to do something about the worst of those injuries soon. As for the rest of what he is definitely not asking questions about, it will come in due course, Rex knows…or perhaps not. He will accept whatever Ahsoka thinks is best. He’s been a military man for a long time; he’s learned how to be patient. And he’s also served under Jedi; he’s learned how to focus on the present.

***

No one in the Rebel Alliance knows about this place. Not Gregor and Wolffe. Not Hera, Kanan, Ezra, and the rest of the crew of the Ghost. Not Bail Organa. No, this is a safe place, a secret place...and it’s a place they’ve saved solely for them.

They focus on stabilizing Ahsoka’s shoulder first. She refuses anesthetic, of course—although she insists that she’s no Jedi anymore, her distaste for any and all mind-altering substances, including the ones that might help a field medic (or an amateur field medic) to do his job sans interference is quintessential Jedi Order nonsense. Still, some of his brothers coped far worse with surgery during the war, and under much better operating conditions, than Ahsoka does now.

It’s not until they start treating the least of Ahsoka’s various superficial lacerations with bacta gel that the tears start to well up in Ahsoka’s big, Togruta-blue eyes.

“Tell me you’re having second thoughts about the anesthetic at last,” Rex says with carefully calibrated good humor. Tenderly, he wipes the tears from her cheeks with clean gauze. Her lekku are twitching, and her montrals are vibrating. Whatever this hurt she’s feeling is, it must be _bad_.

“No, it’s not…it’s just that…that…oh, _dammit_ …!” Ahsoka hasn’t stuttered like that since, well, since _never_. She shudders as two fresh teardrops fall, unchecked, one from each eye, and takes a deep, steadying breath. Eventually, she is able to continue speaking with more confidence. “Darth Vader. I fought Darth Vader. And Rex, it’s Anakin. Anakin is Darth Vader.”

“He…what? When did you—?! Why did he—?! But _how_ …?!”

No wonder Ahsoka is hurting. The very essence of Rex’s old, battered soul is alight with agony as well.

***

When they first met, they were hardly more than younglings who’d been forced to grow up too soon. Rex didn’t think of it like that at the time, and neither did Ahsoka, but the passage of years has allowed them to look back on the war with a different perspective. _She_ had been a mere apprentice training for knighthood. _He_ , a Kaminoan clone, had literally been subjected to accelerated aging to mature his body for the rigors of combat and intensive training to prepare his mind for the same.

Unfortunately, they had been rather less ready for other…things. _That_ readiness had taken them many more years than the entire length of the Clone Wars.

They shouldn’t fit together, the human male and the Togruta female, but somehow, they do, and they find sweet solace in their mutual embrace, as always. Most of their shared nights, Ahsoka is fierce, like a hunter between the bedsheets, stalking, pouncing, tearing at him with her hunger and passion and need. Tonight, though, she yields softly to him, and they rock back and forth into each other, mindful of all the injuries—physical and spiritual—that threaten to tear open and bleed.

The ecstasy of release, such as it is, is momentary and over far, far too soon. No pleasure, no matter how intense and mirror-bright, can shine a cleansing light on the shadow which weighs upon them.

“I have to go, Rex,” Ahsoka says afterward as they lie together, lazy and replete from lovemaking.

“No, you don’t. The Rebellion needs you,” Rex protests. His arms around her waist tighten. She will not leave at this very moment, but he knows she means that it will be soon and that it will not be a brief absence.

“I do. I’m sorry. On Malachor, I saw…I saw… No, I can’t discuss it. There is more at stake here than I could have imagined.”

“But the Rebellion _needs_ —”

“No,” Ahsoka interrupts, compassionate but firm. “The Rebellion will have what it needs. It was never my destiny to destroy the Sith. That unenviable task falls upon another. Until I saw Ana—” She stops, winces, and starts again. “Until I saw Vader with my own eyes, I hadn’t realized we’d been asking all the wrong questions. I think I have a better understanding of what those questions ought to be, Rex, and I must find the answers.”

Rex sighs. He doesn’t want to, but he understands. “I wish I could deceive myself into believing that what you’re _really_ planning is some downtime. A holiday, say, away from this neverending struggle against the Empire. But I know you. A new front has opened up in the war between the Light and the Darkness, and you’re rushing off to fight on the front lines of it.”

Ahsoka’s silence is sufficient affirmation. Her breath is warm and moist against his shoulder where she nuzzles him affectionately. An apology of sorts, but not a change of conviction. It’s why he loves her.

Rex sighs again and pulls Ahsoka’s lithe body in close to his. Tomorrow, they will go their separate paths, and they might never meet again. But for now, they will take what rest they can. Yes. Tonight, they will be happy.

They are both old soldiers, and when you’re an old soldier, you deserve that much.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to the exchange on July 1, 2018.


End file.
